Re: Why physical laws

From: Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon Jun 14 03:36:27 1999

Comments to Gilles Henri, GSLevy, Wei Dai (Thread:RE:Why Physical Laws).

Gilles Henri wrote:
>I think you always have to postulate the identity of the computation with
>the physical reality if you are looking for an ontological theory.

Only if you postulate in a substancial ontology. I don't.

Gilles Henri wrote:
>I know
>that I can simulate perfectly a harmonic oscillator with a simple program.
>When I write such a program, do I build a harmonic oscillator?

If comp is correct: Yes. If you believe in some subtancial harmonic
oscillator: NO. But with comp I hardly believe in ANY ontologically prior
substance.

>On Fri, Jun 11, 1999 at 05:35:28PM +0200, Gilles HENRI wrote:
>> James, here you assume that the conscious process derives from physical
>> laws, exactly what I support. In the "everything computable exists",
>> nothing prevents to generate Universes where conscious structures do exist,
>> but don't have a proper representation of their environment (which may not
>> exist at all..). That's just like producing fake images with computers.
>> What I fear is that these universes would be much more numerous than those
>> where conscious structures have
>> this proper representation, just as if you generate all possible images,
>> you will get
>> 1) mostly non-interpretable images
>> 2) interpretable images not corresponding to realistic situations (flying
>> elephants and so on...)
>> 3) images corresponding to realistic situations.
>>
>> with of course n(1)>>n(2)>>n(3)
>>
>> But nature produces only type (3) images...

and Wei Dai answered:
>I thought this problem has already been solved. Did you miss all the
>earlier threads about algorithmic complexity and how the measure of
>conscious experiences that are "realistic" would be higher than the measure
>of experiences that are not "realistic" because they (the former) would be
>produced by shorter programs.

I would like to insist that this is only part of the explanation.
If the "shorter program" was a Newtonian-like dynamical program which
build
in a deterministic way only one "futur", then n(1)>>n(2)>>n(3).

Only a short highly non deterministic program (like Schroedinger equation
viewed from inside) can made n(3)>>[n(1)+n(2)].

GSLevy wrote:
>Consciousness requires rationality, Hence the world we perceive must be
>rational.

I would like to agree. But this is not so simple to justify. Irrationnal
beeings does perceive "worlds". Hallucinations and dreams are conscious
phenomenon. So I agree in principle, but I am still searching precise
argument for linking consciuosness with weak form of rationnality. Any
helps here are welcome.

>Thus the rationality of the mind and the rationality of the world can be
>explained simultaneously, BECAUSE THEY STEM FROM THE SAME PHENOMENON: THE
>ANTHROPIC TIME LINKAGE IN THE MW.

I like that. Just replace TIME by any "PHYSICALITIES" (space, time,
causality, energy, etc.).

Bruno.

PS Gilles, resend your message to the everything-list if you want that
others can read your entire message (!).
Received on Mon Jun 14 1999 - 03:36:27 PDT